Andy Richter: Hillary is Corrupt, But I’m Voting for Her Anyway

Mark Mainz/Getty Images16 Mar 2016

Andy Richter believes the reason Donald Trump’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination has been so successful is because the billionaire businessman is not really running for president — he’s running a reality TV show, Richter contends, and will not ultimately win the White House.

In an interview with TheHollywood Reporter, the late-night sidekick to Conan O’Brien shared his thoughts on Trump’s ascension in politics, the power (or lack thereof) of celebrity endorsements and why he’s voting for Hillary Clinton.

“It’s not going to end well. Trump will crash and burn, I think,” Richter told THR. “There’s just not enough savvy in terms of keeping things together in him. He has a lot of savvy in stirring sh*t up. But eventually, he’s going to have to keep things together, and I don’t think he has that kind of savvy.”

The 49-year-old late-night mainstay said he knows why Trump has been successful — he’s taken the lessons he learned from countless seasons of his reality TV show The Apprentice and applied them to presidential politics.

“I felt early on in Trump’s campaign that the reason he seemed to be getting so much traction is that he wasn’t running for president, he was producing a television show about a guy running for president,” Richter told THR, adding:

“People running for president [in years past] have tried to run their campaign like a television show, making it interesting. And [Trump] came in and said ‘Why are you running it like a TV show? It is a TV show! Just say whatever you want. Don’t worry about issues. Most people don’t even give a sh*t about issues. Just say what they want to hear, be the most interesting guy, pick fights — everyone loves a fight. ‘ This is all well within his wheelhouse.”

Richter said he plans to vote for Hillary Clinton in November, even though she’s “very much an imperfect candidate and very much a flawed person.”

“No other woman has been further than she is. And if you think that a woman can come as far as she has, and have the political experience that she has without getting some mud on her, you are kidding yourself,” Richter told THR. “Because the only reason she is in this proximity to power is because she’s played games with powerful people. And there will be something extremely powerful in not just having a woman, but this particular woman in the White House, and I believe that.”